Is Art Child’s Play?
Jean-Hubert Martin
There was a time when it was proper for young boys to act out war. The game took two forms: either dressing up as a soldier with a helmet, a rifle, and a wooden sword, or engaging in Kriegspiel—the military game—by maneuvering the figure sets and their equipment in the clash of two miniature armies. In Europe, the prestige of the uniform has declined, and after the two world wars it was no longer acceptable to raise children to fight each other. Russia is an exception.
Kriegspiel has not disappeared, but it is no longer practised with toy soldiers as much as with tanks, aeroplanes and drones to mirror the nature of reality that has moved away from reliance on hand-to-hand combat.
Before being made of lead, tin or aluminium, toy soldiers were made of paper. Children and adults nostalgic for the regiment could thus build up real armies at little cost. In the 19th and 20th centuries, manufacturers in Épinal and Wissembourg in France specialised in producing sheets featuring dozens of identical soldiers from all the belligerent nations. The city of Strasbourg, at the crossroads of European routes, saw so many armies and garrisons pass through that it became a centre for the production of these cut-out soldiers, painted in minute detail in their uniforms and held at attention by small wooden pegs glued behind their feet. Publishers did not content themselves with printing thousands of identical soldiers in uniforms that stripped them of all individuality; they kept pace with developments in warfare by offering helmets and headgear to assemble, as well as aeroplanes and tanks. A Polish Uhlan shako flattened on its cardboard before cutting and assembly can therefore take on unusual appearances that are very different from its three-dimensional model.
‘Art is child's play,’ said Max Ernst. In the context in which he used it, he was undoubtedly referring to the basic techniques of cutting, collage and rubbing that every child experiments with from an early age. He also meant it in the sense of the French expression that refers to ease, in this case the simplicity of the creative act. But in addition, Ernst who so often referred to childhood memories in his works, also wanted to emphasise the importance of this period of life, where every artist is true to their roots. This is undoubtedly true for Osmolovsky.
He removed the wheels from his armoured vehicles and erased their hulls, retaining only the turrets, from which he removed the cannons. The massive object with sloping sides, once cast in polished bronze, resembles a design object that could easily be mistaken for a large ashtray, sitting on a coffee table in a living room or on the desk of a civil servant at the Ministry of War. The silent dialogue between artists and designers continues unabated. Tony Cragg has lined up plastic bottles to question the strangeness of their shapes and origins. Osmolovsky brings tanks into the hushed interiors of the bourgeoisie for the beauty of their material and form, perhaps without their knowledge. The design of these turrets actually varies greatly by nationality and date of tank production. Its proportions are not, as with an aeroplane, dictated by aerodynamics, far from it. It would be more accurate to think of it as a kind of ‘dynamic armour’, as the primary constraint is for the turret to offer as little resistance as possible to a projectile. The evolution of their shape is clear. The first tanks of the 1914-18 war were large boxes fitted with chains that encircled them. The French Renault FT tank of 1917 had a prominent turret that resembled a turtle's head protruding from its shell. Along with its successors, such as the American Sherman tank and the Russian T34, it presented an ideal target. This is why all subsequent tanks flattened the turret as much as possible, while giving it steeply sloped walls to deflect shells.
This principle remains relatively theoretical insofar as it involves both the subjectivity of the designer and, above all, its use in the field, which leads to all kinds of equipment being hung on the sides of the turret. Osmolovsky's models have the advantage of being free of any added elements: gun, machine gun, flap, jerry can, part of the track, camouflage net attached to its sides. They are smooth, golden and visually appealing, as they focus on the essentials of a regular yet intriguing shape.
The absence of wheels means that they are not toys. However, it only took him one more step to return to the stage of child's play by deconstructing these artefacts to make them two-dimensional. By isolating each of the planes and creating connections, he managed to create shapes that could be cut out of cardboard to reconstruct the turrets. In this way, he reverses and reconstructs the process of the designer, who undoubtedly had to make an initial paper model to study the appearance of the turret. From there, it is only a short step to liken these cut-out sheets to the stationery used in government offices, which as he points out has not changed since the Soviet era. Spread across the walls are metaphors of office stationery that clearly convey the image of a belligerence inherent in today's Russian administrations and ministries.
The files and office folders, marked by their strings, are torn apart here to show that they carry the unconsciousness that conveys the persistence of war of conquest. The flattening of this war mechanism gives rise to various interpretations. One can see in it both a German iron cross and anthropomorphic silhouettes suggesting uniforms or military exercises. These papers can also be used to wrap the tanks, which are thus transformed, beneath their innocent appearance for children, into toxic sweets.
The caterpillar tracks visible through the transparency take on a geometric and regular appearance that is just as reassuring as the artist's tanks. These light, ephemeral traces have nevertheless been inscribed in the ground by heavy war machines. As much as these instruments of destruction inspire fear, life will reclaim its rights once the traces of these mechanical monsters have been erased.
When I think about the war in Ukraine, I cannot shake the image of an essential work by Osmolovsky that he has shown in several exhibitions: Une latte de parquet 2002 (A Parquet Floorboard 2002), which rises up at one end in the shape of an outstretched hand. A vision haunts me regularly: from all the parquet floors of all the houses in Ukraine, wooden hands rise together to say ‘stop’, while strikes on civilian targets continue to increase under the orders of a dictator who dreams of an empire that has long since disappeared.
A resurgence of spirituality is being felt around the world, both in the fight against rampant materialism and against institutionalised religions because of their dogmatism, hierarchy and scandalous activities. Art is logically the domain to allow its rebirth in complete freedom and without hindrance. Osmolovsky took a late interest in the Orthodox religion, which he had not been brought up to practise in his childhood. He felt the need to return to his historical heritage and his own cultural tradition. Many Russian artists have already broken with the model of European-American modernity, particularly the Sots-Art movement, which is still too little known in our country. Others, in order to protect themselves from foreign influences, have plunged into a neo-religiousness that could not escape a nostalgia coupled with mystical accents.
Once again, Osmolovsky has found the right and fertile strategy. He reappropriates the iconostasis, the major element of the sacred furniture of the Orthodox Church, and diverts it. Each of its parts is reinterpreted in the manner of a baker, that is to say, as a piece of rye bread, dark and with a very dense texture. The transposition proves to be polysemic. One immediately thinks of the wealth of the priests and the patriarch's gold watch in contrast to the poverty of the faithful. In addition to access to food, artefacts, which contours echo those of the iconostasis, raise the question of transubstantiation, i.e. the transformation of the bread into the body of Christ at the consecration of the Eucharist. This miracle, performed daily during Mass, enabled Christianity to do away with sacrifices and thus ensure its spread throughout the world, undoubtedly benefiting from colonialism.
The question arises as to what the fundamental needs of human beings are. One of the factors in the failure of communism was the belief that it was enough to provide for people's food needs. But bread is not enough. The heads of revolutionaries impaled on pikes, as depicted in French imagery, bear witness to their failures. It is clear today that spiritual satisfaction is essential, along with the urgent need to reconnect with communities and the cosmos. His huge slices of bread are not inert; upon closer inspection, some of them, as in Totems, reveal traces of faces, evidence of intercommunication and the life of matter, without necessarily resorting to dogmatic narratives. It is much more about rediscovering a close relationship with the elements of nature, after several centuries of excessive and unconscious exploitation of the environment by human beings.
